1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the recognition and correction of misspelled words. More specifically, the invention relates to a method and apparatus that provides suggested correct spellings of input words and variant spellings of input words for users of an online database search system.
2. Related Art
The conventional approach to the recognition and correction of spelling errors is to apply various algorithms to compare a word entered by the user (“Input word”) with a collection of words in a spell checker dictionary. Such dictionary is usually called a “Lexicon.”
A number of various algorithms and approaches are known in the prior art. Some of these algorithms and approaches are described in K. Kukich, “Techniques for automatically correcting words in text,” ACM Comput. Surveys 24 4 (1992), pp. 377-439; Zobel and Dart, “Finding approximate matches in large lexicons,” Software—Practice and Experience 25 3 (1994), pp. 331-345; U.S. Pat. No. 5,604,897, entitled “Method and system for correcting the spelling of misspelled words”; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,774,588, entitled “Method and system for comparing strings with entries of a lexicon.”
All known approaches depend on utilization of lexicons built upon “well respected” dictionaries of words (for example, Webster, Specialized Dictionary of Legal Terms, etc.). This lexicon build process requires human involvement to pick a dictionary that meets the purpose by “the best way.” Such lexicons usually do not contain proper nouns and they are not customized for particular categories or types of data in which the user may be interested.
It is to the solution of these and other problems that the present invention is directed.